


you construct intricate rituals

by rispacooper



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Dorks in Love, Drinking, Gentleness, Homophobia, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV Derek "Nursey" Nurse, Pining, Touch-Starved, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 20:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: Derek was good at ignoring shit he didn’t feel like thinking about. Almost as good as Bitty was at muttering under his breath.





	you construct intricate rituals

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to blame vashti-lives for finding that first line so funny. Yup. All her fault. (Also, I am not picking on Maine. I have nothing against Maine. Derek just has ideas.) 
> 
> These characters belong to Ngozi. :)

Derek realized something was up when he pinned Dex down on the green Haus couch to fart on him. Dex was shoving at Derek’s ass with both hands but laughing, whatever he’d say about it later, laughing too hard to put any force into his struggling. He could barely speak either, nothing but gasping, “Fuck you! Fuck off! The fuck did you eat?” with his red, red face turned away and his eyes squeezed shut. 

Bitty hollered something from the kitchen but Derek honestly didn’t hear anything except the giddy, too-loud sounds coming out of his mouth and Dex’s hysterical swearing. He didn’t look up to see if Bitty was watching. He didn’t look at anything but his hat—the stolen snapback that had started this—falling to the floor as Dex writhed underneath him, and Dex practically _giggling_ and trying to pretend he was pissed.

The palms of Derek’s hands were hot, like the heat of Dex’s body had stuck to him in the moments of surprise attack and pounce and dirty wrestling. Dex’s shirt had ridden up. Derek thought he’d touched bare skin. Dex’s chest or stomach, probably. Where Derek was sitting now. 

Derek’s palms were hot and he was staring.

He was staring _hard_. 

His chest tightened, like his lungs didn’t work, and he got light-headed. 

That was all it took. Dex shoved him again and Derek went down, bumping his knee on the coffee table and landing on his ass on the floor. 

Dex’s crow of laughter was maddening enough to make Derek forget the weird moment, or at least push it away. He was back up in a second, limping but determined to retake his cruelly snatched hat from shiny, sweaty ginger hair. 

He had the thought again, a worried streak of _something_ , when Bitty came in and found him on top of Dex. 

But like, whatever. Derek was good at ignoring shit he didn’t feel like thinking about. Almost as good as Bitty was at muttering under his breath. 

 

 _As bad as football players._ What did that even mean, anyway? 

 

Derek knew exactly what it meant. He all knew about sports culture, and he didn’t need Shitty to define homosocial or homoerotic or _anything_ homo to him, for that matter. 

Derek was very comfortable with sometimes making out with guys and considering maybe someday going further than that if he met a guy he liked enough. He wasn’t denying anything, and he wasn’t repressed, and he wasn’t uptight, unlike some people. 

But it was his business—and maybe C’s business because Derek had told him, and Farms, and he had a feeling Dex knew because maaaybe Dex had witnessed one of those makeouts, but the point was, Derek wasn’t like what Bitty was thinking he was like. Nothing was like what Bitty had implied in his seriously not cool way. 

Derek wasn’t repressing anything. 

 

Dex was standing apart, the way he always did. Like an island. Like a forlorn, lonely, windswept island off the coast of Maine somewhere. The kind of island where a character in a novel would have moved after losing the love of his life, and he’d work with his hands and wear flannel and grow a beard that shouldn’t have looked good with red hair but somehow did anyway. And he’d like… row boats and fish and know how to start fires, which would be like, metaphorical, because later of course the love of his life would have to come back and need his help. The tension between them, all the things left unsaid, would rise and rise until suddenly they’d be kissing, bodies plastered together in the rain, mouths ravenous, hands scrabbling and almost vicious with all they’ve held back. Then—

“You know I can hear you, right?” Farmer asked Derek, sounding concerned and also amused. 

Derek didn’t take his eyes off Dex. “’M gonna be a writer.”

“Of romance novels? Not complaining. I’d read them.” Farms was the best. 

Derek patted her arm absently while taking another swallow of his tub juice. It was easy to touch Farmer. Like, respectfully. With respect. But easy. Farmer was easy. And awesome. And the best. 

“You know who is not the bessst?” Derek slurred at her. “Wwwilliam.” It was not easy to touch Dex. Dex wouldn’t let it be. 

And Derek got boundaries. He did. He respected them and sometimes even liked that Dex had so many. Because Derek had them too, and now he and Dex were what they were and they didn’t push those anymore. 

Except Dex _liked_ to be touched, he did. But certain people got to. Certain times. Certain ways. And even when he was with them, Frogs for life, he was also always there. Apart. 

No, wait—

Apart. 

Derek moved the word down to a separate line in the novel in his head, to emphasize how _apart_ Dex was. 

Farmer was making noises. 

Dex smiled at someone. He had been drinking too, because it was a happy smile, ear to ear. But he didn’t hug them. He didn’t step closer. He had to be so hungry. His skin must ache. No wonder he frowned. Someone should skate their hands up his back, trace over his chest. Not even… not even like for sex necesss—necess— _necessarily_. Unless he wanted sex. Someone should put their hands on him with no intent except to make the need less. He must need so much. 

Someone should hold his hand. 

“Can still hear you,” Farmer said in a suspiciously high voice. 

Derek shook his head. “’M thirsty.”

“You’re holding a cup of alcohol,” Chris told him. Derek wasn’t sure when Chowder had arrived. 

“Don’ wan’ tub juice,” Derek complained after another sip. A girl he didn’t know walked over to Dex with an extra beer in her hands. “Not apart now,” Derek noted automatically. He was staring, maybe. He was staring hard, maybe. 

Dex’s fingers brushed hers on the can as she handed it over. 

“I have nice hands,” Derek whined. “Empty, but nice.” 

“Maybe she’s just visiting the island?” Farmer suggested helpfully. 

“Isss not easy to… to touch an island. You need—you need a boat.” Derek frowned across the room. “Not a hat. Not a football. Don’ have a football, anyway.”

“She doesn’t have a boat,” Farmer pointed out, reasonably, like a woman full of reason. 

“She’s got beer.” Derek sighed heavily. 

“Hey,” Chowder said, close to his ear, almost making Derek turn away to look at him. But if he had, he would have missed Dex giving the girl a tight, not-as-happy-anymore smile and inching back ever so slightly. “ _Hey_ ,” Chris said again, firmer this time. Derek finally blinked and looked over. Chris had a serene, yet evil smile for someone with no shirt and no pants. “You know what the beer is, though, right?”

“An excuse,” Farmer added, because they were the kind of couple to finish each other’s sandwiches. 

“I know what an excuse is,” Derek answered loftily, the words surprisingly clear. “Don’t need one. ‘M not a repressed sport football boy. I know what I want.”

He nodded firmly then downed the last of his tub juice in one swallow. 

 

Dex’s hands were cool on the back of Derek’s neck while Derek was facedown over the toilet later. Dex frowned a lot, and rolled his eyes, and wiped Derek’s face with a washcloth in a way that was more gentle than rough. Dex got him mouthwash and water and put him to bed. 

His hands were cool but Derek’s skin was hot. 

 

Derek spotted Dex at the gym. He did it all the time. It was a completely normal and helpful thing to do for a teammate, and it absolutely did not twig anything in Derek’s brain or make him freeze in place whenever Dex said, “Okay,” after he asked. He didn’t notice _at all_ that Dex let him put his hands wherever he wanted provided that Dex’s were full of weights or busy holding Dex’s taut, tight body up. 

He did elbow Tango out of the way and send him off toward Whiskey when Tango offered to spot Dex. But Tadpoles had to learn—this was something Derek did. No one else. 

Dex got even more tense otherwise. And who knew what would happen to the stick up his butt then. 

Not that he really seemed to have a stick up his butt whenever he looked up and saw Derek watching him. The stray sunbeams that kept finding him made him go all gold and shiny, which was funny with how red and flushed he got when working out. 

Not funny _ha ha_ but more funny in Derek’s stomach. Like bubbles or butterflies were trapped beneath his skin. 

Dex had a stupid smile. That big, wide one made Derek feel like he was in the sunbeam too. 

Maybe he was thinking of the last time he’d seen it, or what would happen if he pressed his mouth to it, but his hand slipped, curling over Dex’s sweaty shoulder for a second, and something in Derek’s brain started to whisper. It sounded a lot like Bitty. 

Derek pulled back and socked Dex in the arm. 

Not too hard. 

A little too hard. 

And then he laughed. “Not bad, Poindexter,” he said, while still laughing. A weird, nervous, high cackle that made Ollie, Wicks, and C turn to him as one to stare at him. 

Dex laughed too, though. “Fuck you, Nurse. Now it’s your turn.”

Then he got up and put a hand on Derek’s shoulder, easily, because it was easy even for Dex when they were spotting each other, and his hand burned on Derek’s overheated skin. Derek’s internal Bitty voice hummed thoughtfully and Derek’s voice formed a sound not unlike a whimper, and Derek—Derek definitely had a problem. 

 

The artwork in Derek textbook was clear as day. Kind of obvious, but maybe the point was that the audience at the time had needed something that obvious. Barbara Kruger had something to say about American masculinity, and before today, before that moment in the gym, Derek would have agreed and maybe written a paper about it, just for fun. 

The picture was black and white, a group of somewhat well-dressed white boys in old-school blazers playfighting, or really fighting, and then over it, in big, bold text, it read, _You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch of the skin of other men._

Obvious, but powerful. The kind of thing repressed, homosocial, touch-starved men needed to hear but would deny. The kind of thing they probably did in football locker rooms. The kind of thing they did in hockey locker rooms too. The kind of thing they probably did in Maine. The kind of thing to make someone afraid to touch anyone, especially someone they really wanted to. 

Derek saw it and had seen it, but this time he really _saw it_. 

 

He burst into C’s room with only the slightest pause to knock first, then remembered himself and stopped in the doorway. 

Chris stared at him expectantly. 

Derek opened his mouth to form the words. _I don’t know why we used to fight. I know_ exactly _why. I make up excuses to touch Dex. I find reasons to touch Dex. I_ like _touching Dex. I like being one of the few who gets to touch Dex. Dex makes my fingertips feel warm. Dex makes_ me _feel warm. Holy shit, I like Dex. Holy shit, I—_

He closed his mouth. He needed to choose his words carefully. 

“Do I touch Dex too much?” he blurted. 

Chris swiveled all the way around in his desk chair to face him, his chin in his hands. “You poor, sad, broken man,” he said gravely. Which was all the answer Derek needed. 

 

Derek didn’t know what to do with himself. He sat down next to Dex in the dining hall, like always when their schedules matched, but now the press of their arms and their thighs together made him tense up and lean away. He found reasons to sit next to Chowder instead and hoped it looked smooth because he didn’t want to creep Dex out now that they were finally friends. He didn’t have a plan except to try to maintain some sort of distance and then—nothing. He had nothing. 

Derek’s skin felt like he’d scrubbed too hard in the shower. His nerves were screaming from keeping himself away from all the little things they did. Stumbling into Dex on the way to Faber. Smoothing his hand over Dex’s hair after a rough practice. The wicked grin they’d share before bumping fists on the ice. Somehow, Dex had become the person Derek was closest to and he hadn’t noticed.

He hadn’t _wanted_ to notice. Because deep down he’d known this would happen. 

But holy shit, just thinking of what it must have looked like to everyone else. He’d argued and fought and gotten into a slap fight with Dex—although Dex had deserved it at the time. Then they’d become friends but just… kept fighting. Derek kept poking at him and teasing him and wrestling him. _Wrestling him._ It was so obvious Derek wanted to curl up in shame every time he thought about it. 

And also get off, because every moment he’d denied to himself before was suddenly replaying in his mind down to every last sigh and accidental slip of his leg between Dex’s thighs. 

Which was why he had to avoid Dex. 

But Dex kept not cooperating, that fucker. 

Dex snuck Derek coffee in the way he did where he pretended he’d gotten an extra one on accident but he always ordered it and it was always just how Derek liked it, but now Derek had no idea where to put his hands when he accepted it without their fingertips brushing. It was like shocks now. Like some Mr. Darcy, period drama, hand touching bullshit that would have made his sister squeal if she’d seen it in a movie. 

Derek half-wanted to keep his hands full and ask Dex to put the coffees on the counter for him but then Dex would turn pink and frown and make up some reason why he had another coffee again today, and Derek had to take it or it would be rude and then they would touch and he wanted to die or swoon, he couldn’t decide. 

He _was_ a sad, broken man. 

 

When Dex stole his snapback again in the middle of a Sharknado marathon, Derek turned to lunge at him. Out of habit. Out of gleeful joy at the idea of fighting him for it and falling down on top of him and sliding his fingers through his hair and burying his face in Dex’s throat until Dex’s fingers splayed over his back and Dex was breathing hard. 

Then Bitty glanced their way, curious or alarmed, and Derek froze. 

Dex stared at him, scowling and pale, and blinked several times when Derek sat back down and stayed on his side of the couch. 

 

Dex left Derek’s snapback on the couch and hadn’t gone near it since, although Derek hadn’t moved it. 

He got up early so nobody bumped into anybody else in their fight over the bathroom in the mornings. He sat next to Derek at lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays but their arms and thighs might as well have had miles between them. 

He asked Chowder to spot him. 

Derek’s hands stayed conspicuously cold. 

 

He had never felt as lonely in his life as he did with Dex sitting right next to him, but apart.

 

“I think I… I think I kind of like Dex,” Derek confessed to Bitty, after a week of distance, and weirdness, and watching Dex drink more than his customary two beers at a quiet Haus gathering and put his head onto Farmer’s shoulder when Derek’s had been open and available. 

Bitty snorted in the middle of a sip of his latte, then coughed. He slowly looked over at Derek across the table. 

It occurred to Derek that he had never actually come out to Bitty, but it seemed a little late now.  


“I _know_ I kind of like Dex,” Derek corrected himself anyway. It was half a lie because he more than “kind of” liked Dex but all this honesty was making him jittery. He picked up his fork to shove more pie in his face. Bitty’s Moomaw’s cherry pie did not shut him up the way it should have. “Now I can’t—I want—he’s the one I let myself care for and I thought it was _safe_ , and now I’m fucked.” 

Bitty stared at him for another second. Maybe he was thinking of what he’d said that had started this. _He_ was the one who had noticed Derek was in the kitchen studying alone and not up with the other Frogs. He was the one who put a piece of pie in front of Derek and then muttered, “I’d never thought I’d miss all the roughhousing.” Maybe he was thinking that if Dex were there, he would have snapped at Derek for spitting pie everywhere and thrown a towel at his face. Maybe he was thinking that then Derek would have kicked out in retaliation to trip him and Dex would have fallen against him, and for one long moment Derek would have had him in his arms and—

“Oh my God.” Derek painfully swallowed too much pie. “Those excuses were so _obvious_. He probably—”

Bitty pushed away from the table and stood up. He went to the cabinets, got another plate, and cut another slice of still cooling pie. He put a fork on the plate next to it, and then handed it to Derek with a glint in his eye and pink in his cheeks. 

Derek could always eat more pie but he still had some on his plate, and stared up in confusion. “What’s this?”

“An excuse,” Bitty popped smartly back at him and held the slice of pie in front of him until he took it. 

 

Dex was sitting on the lower bunk in their room, a small paperback for his English class in his hands, a determined scowl on his face. Chowder was at their desk, his laptop open. 

Derek didn’t know what this was—was denying what this was—until Chris looked up, smiled at him like a shark—not chill—and swept out of the room with his laptop in hand without saying a word. 

Derek swung back toward Dex, who stared up at him warily. There was no sunlight in the room. The lamplight was artificial. All the same, Dex was softly flushed and staring hard at Derek as though he was a little mad, or hurt, but also as though he wouldn’t mind if Derek came closer. Maybe not how Derek wanted to. But maybe, if Dex was an island, he didn’t mind the occasional Derek Nurse stopping by. For a visit. Not to stay. Unless he wanted. 

Spiky Dex island was probably all full of jagged rocks and carefully hidden harbors. 

He didn’t mind Derek, though. Derek had used to think so. Or Dex _had_ minded him, at the beginning. But he didn’t anymore. He just watched him and wrestled him and laughed and smiled. 

Derek’s stomach swooped. He tripped—for the fourth time since taking the plate from Bitty, not that anyone was counting—and held it out before he crashed into Dex’s feet. 

His volume control had disappeared. “Hey, Dex,” he announced to half the Haus. “Brought you pie.” 

“Did you spit in it?” Dex asked immediately, as though Derek had ever spat in his food. 

Once. He had once, but on accident. He’d been trying to demonstrate his loogie hocking technique and Dex’s sandwich had been collateral damage. 

“No.” Derek shook his head. 

“Did you fart on it?” Dex demanded without hesitation and Derek felt himself grinning through his outrage. 

“That is Bitty’s Moomaw’s cherry pie,” he defended himself easily, maybe still a little loud but getting better. “Who farts on a pie, you godless heathen?”

Dex’s eyes lit up. “Probably the sort of person who wears someone else’s Springsteen shirt and then puts it back in the clean laundry pile without washing it.” 

“Wearing something one time doesn’t automatically make it dirty,” Derek argued. “And Springsteen sounds like the kind of music your parents bone to.” Why was talking about Dex’s parents boning? Why was he using the word boning? Why wasn’t he thinking about boning Dex in some old car while strange, smoky-voiced dad rock played?

Oh shit. Now he was. 

He was on fire. “Are you going to take the pie or not?”

Dex squinted at him, looking almost disappointed at the lack of further argument, but then he reached for the plate. 

Their hands touched. 

Derek was pathetic and _living_. 

Dex kept his gaze down as he took a bite. His fingers on the fork were captivating. Derek had a problem. He knew it. Apparently, everyone did. 

For the first time, he allowed himself to wonder if Dex did. The longer Derek watched him, the more steadily Dex kept his attention on the pie. They were pretty close. Derek should step back but he hadn’t yet. He could take one half-step forward and be practically between Dex’s legs. 

Dex’s ears were red along the shell. They looked very nuzzleable. Derek sort of hoped some part of him looked equally nuzzleable to Dex. People thought—Derek knew what people thought about him. But that was general. That was _people_. This was _Dex_. 

Dex had been in locker rooms. Locker rooms in Maine, even. He did math, liked patterns. He might know all about intricate rituals. 

Derek wanted to touch him without inventing a reason. He wanted Dex to touch him. Fuck, he just wanted to be _close_ again. 

“Why—” Dex broke the silence first, still not looking up as he swallowed. “Why are you bringing me pie?” 

“I—” Derek’s self-preservation instincts were hard to break. So was the habit of teasing, picking a fight for some approximation of intimacy. “Why do you bring me coffee?”

Dex startled, then glanced away. He briefly clenched his jaw. “Guys can do that for their friends.”

“I like you,” Derek said, anxious and loud and shivering. “I fucking like you. Like, I like guys sometimes and I like you specifically. And I got tired—no, I don’t mind fighting with you to be near you but I don’t like making up stupid reasons to touch you when I could just ask….”

He trailed off into wheezing, surprised nothingness when Dex’s hand slid into his. Dex’s grip was tight, terrified. 

More than just Dex’s ears were red now. 

Derek was effervescent. He was alight. Dex wasn’t looking at him, was pretending he didn’t want to smile when Derek didn’t shake him off or take his words back, but he wasn’t letting go. Derek took a long breath and then put his other hand over Dex’s so he wouldn’t be so scared, so Dex wouldn’t be so scared either. 

“I like you,” Dex told him, in the softest voice Dex had ever used. 

Derek stared at him. He was in love, he realized, and that was all it took. Dex didn’t even have to tug and Derek went down. Dex grunted at the clumsy landing but somehow saved the pie. He dropped his book. Their thighs touched. Their arms too. Dex went tense all over, then relaxed against Derek with a sigh. 

His flushed cheek was hot to the touch. 

His fingertips left trails on the sensitive skin on the inside of Derek’s wrist. 

The leftover pie was set carefully onto the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> The artwork under discussion: https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/untitled-you-construct-intricate-rituals-35582


End file.
